One afternoon we stumbled on a piano that had been abandoned in a building set for demolition. Its keys were curious—some chipped, some gleaming—and when Ted touched them, the notes did not so much play as remember. An old woman, passing by with a bag of oranges, paused and wept the way people do when they recognize their younger self in a doorway. Bill closed his eyes and said, "This is why we go. To make room for memory."
Keep looking for the missing pages. Keep planting impossible things. Keep arguing in the attic and laughing in the field. I will keep keeping watch of the little rituals you teach the rest of us—leaving a chair for a stranger, returning a book, admitting that you were wrong. I will keep learning to be brave when no one is watching. Dear Cousin Bill And Ted Pjk
You moved through the neighborhood like people who had been given permission to redraw the lines. Kids playing hopscotch glanced up and learned, by osmosis, that the rules were optional. Mrs. Kline watered her dahlias in a different rhythm. A man walking two dogs nodded as if he'd been let in on a private joke. You had that effect—the sort of presence that rearranges small atoms of the world until they make a more complicated pattern. One afternoon we stumbled on a piano that
I sometimes think of you in the quiet hours, Bill with his ledger and Ted with his grin, and I try to be braver. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I surprise myself. Occasionally, someone new moves to the block and does not know the rules; when that happens, I tell them, simply: "If you want to know a secret about this place, ask Bill and Ted." They always look startled, then delighted, as if someone had handed them a map to a small country they'd always wanted to visit. Bill closed his eyes and said, "This is why we go